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A cluster of radio-controlled Jellyfish LED T-Shirts

What do jellyfish have to do with radio-control and LEDs – or t-shirts for that matter? An excellent question that can be answered very easily. As a submission for the Luminaria 2012 arts festival in San Antonio, Texas, a group of artists created eight t-shirts with a jellyfish pattern. They also have matching RGB LEDs which are controlled via microcontroller and wireless data link.

The reason for such a complex radio-controlled network of t-shirts is simple – instead of having one t-shirt with a unique pattern, all eight can be controlled at once to replicate the same pattern, or each shirt can be a part of a larger installation. All this is explained very well in the following video by the creators, so if you have a spare twenty minutes check it out:

Controlling your own network of RGB LEDs wireless isn’t as complex as you would think. The creaors have used the small and simple Jeenodes wireless data modules with Arduino-compatible microcontrollers built-in – perfect for this project.

Finally, the creators of this project have documented the entire project, including methods, schematics, code, setbacks and solutions in great detail, so for more information head over to the project page here: http://10bitworks.com/wiki/doku.php/ledshirts